Minority Influence

Question 1

What is Minority Influence?

Answer 1

A form of social influence in which a minority (sometimes just 1 person) persuades others to adopt their beliefs, attitudes or behaviours

This may lead to Internalisation, in which we agree publicly and privately with the minority view

Question 2

What are the types of Minority Influence?

Answer 2

• Consistency
• Flexibility
• Commitment

Question 3

Consistency

Answer 3

• Increases the amount of interest from other people
• Can come from agreement between all the people in the minority
  saying the same thing (Synchronic Consistency)
  or
  consistency over time (Diachronic consistency)

Question 4

Flexibility

Answer 4

• Nemeth says that consistency can be interpreted negatively and can be seen as stubborn and rigid and inflexible.
• Instead, members of the majority also need to be prepared to adapt their view and accept reasonable and valid counter-arguments

KEY TO STRIKE:
balance between consistency and flexibility

Question 5

Commitment

Answer 5

• Sometimes minorities engage in extreme activities to draw attention to their views
• It is important that these extreme activities are at some risk to the minority group because this demonstrates commitment to the cause
• Majority group members then pay even more attention
• This is called the Augmentation Principle

Question 6

Evaluate Minority Influence

Answer 6

Strength + Weakness

• Kruglanski argues that many acts of terrorism are intended to bring out social change, they try and use minority influence to do this
• Terrorists are usually consistent, this can be seen in frequent suicide bombing in Iraq
• The minority is expressing their opinion by using the Augmentation Principle
• This conveys their desperation and makes the majority take the group seriously
• However, terrorist minority viewpoints rarely result in the majority changing their viewpoint, regardless of the risk the terrorists are willing to take